Comment by pjmlp
6 hours ago
Like our gym devices that have a full tablet to run a basic application to control weights, talk about wasting money.
6 hours ago
Like our gym devices that have a full tablet to run a basic application to control weights, talk about wasting money.
It doesn't make sense for that device alone, but the vendor probably supplies all the different equipment in the gym. Using a tablet simplifies their supply chain, deployment, debugging/repair, app update process and simply supports more features. There are probably some connectivity features on the device, for example. When you look at all of that together, it's hard to argue it's wasting money.
It's like complaining about Electron apps. For sure I love small native apps like everyone else. But, if Electron enables a company to ship cross-platform apps and iterate faster, who am I to say no?
(I happen to have seen some of those tablets in diagnostic mode and poked around a bit. These things are much more complicated than you think.)
The major problem with sticking an Android tablet on to exercise equipment is the difference in life spans. Android tablets are generally going to last you 4-5 years. Weight equipment should be able to last decades. There is some simple & cheap hardware that can last decades, but it is legitimately harder to program.
Even worse was an article some months back about Android tablets hooked to heating & cooling systems expected to last 20 years. There's no way those things are making it at scale.
Once you price in the cost of integration, plastics, ROHS, CE and other regulatory/certifications, the extra cost of an Android tablet which already has a lot of that starts to make sense.
If you also add in the extra ease of things like device management across fleets etc, it becomes a no-brainer for the manufacturer.
Well, doesn't look like to me, and a plain ESP32 with a touch screen would do the job for displaying a weight bar with plus, minus and reset count buttons.
And then you get to a cardio unit where you want a completely different set of features and have to start over. Going lean on hardware only makes sense when you push out a very high number of units, when you have to deal with battery constraints or when you just have a lot of intertia, the combination of existing codebase and developer filter skillset.
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